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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 832: Books Mediating Borders in Early England

Tuesday 7 July 2020, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:Alexandra Reider, Department of English, Yale University
Moderator/Chair:David Callander, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge
Paper 832-aWriting and Erasure: Inscribing Eternity in Early English Textual Culture
(Language: English)
Jill Hamilton Clements, Department of English, Sweet Briar College, Virginia
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Literacy and Orality
Paper 832-bTotemic Books in Old English Books
(Language: English)
Janet Schrunk Ericksen, Department of English, University of Minnesota, Morris
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Literacy and Orality
Paper 832-cThe Bounds of English and Latin in Early England
(Language: English)
Alexandra Reider, Department of English, Yale University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 832-dHoltes on ende (At the Edge of the Woods): The Wooden Codex in The Dream of the Rood
(Language: English)
Thomas A. Bredehoft, Chancery Hill Books & Antiques, West Virginia
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Literacy and Orality
Abstract

This session examines the ways books and writing mediate various boundaries in early medieval England, from material boundaries between books and other inscribable surfaces, to linguistic and cultural boundaries within and between Latin and English in Anglo-Saxon textual culture. The four proposed papers will explore different features of the book as a malleable image and a metaphor that authors employed to express both earthly cultural identity and salvation after death, making the very concept of writing essential to early English conceptions of the border.